Pepper Pad
July 26, 2005
On friday Casey and I went to see the Pepper Pad in Massachusetts. To me this is a hugely interesting product. It sits in the vacant space between PDAs and laptops, ignoring the existence of Tablet PCs. To tell the truth, I think tablets are entirely useless. Unless you have money to waste or a budget to spend, there is no justifiable reason to invest in these devices. They come up short on the power of a laptop, and are not actually portable. However, the Pepper Pad has found the sweet spot between laptops and PDAs, amazingly they do not pretend to be either and this is where they shine.
Do you ever find yourself watching TV and want to look something up quickly on the Internet? Do you want to be able to see recipes while cooking in the kitchen? Do you want an Internet enabled device you can walk around your house with? If you answered yes to any of these questions or similar ones, the Pepper Pad is for you. From their site:
Portable and lightweight? Definitely.
Able to instantly connect you to all your favorite activities-e-mailing, IM, Web browsing, listening to music, watching videos, sharing photos and more? Absolutely.
How about easy to use, totally low maintenance and ready to travel with you-whether to the couch, the backyard or even the local coffee shop? Check.
That device is here. Say hello to the Pepper Pad. The Pad represents an entirely new category of wireless device-bigger and more powerful than a PDA or mobile phone, but smaller, lighter and far less complex (and a lot more fun) than a laptop.
This is an existing gadget I’d like in my home. However, the Pepper Pad is not perfect. I have to point out the areas they fall slightly short in hopes they, or another generation, will resolve them. Problems:
- Spongy feeling keypad - limited tactical feedback
- Unlabeled “function” key
- Oddly placed backspace button
- Laggy response to stylus input - scrolling with the wheel is great, the stylus is troublesome
- I question the lack of a word processor, even if limited in features/functionality
Not to knock the Pepper Pad, because it is hands down the coolest thing of its kind available, but I want competitors in this space. Would we have ever gotten an MP3 player as sweet as the iPod if there Creative and others hadn’t pioneered that space first, I think not.
In a perfect world someone like Apple would step in and build something If they took the components in the Mini, added a small LCD touch screen, gave it appropriate usability testing, OSX, and a <$800 price tag, they’d make billions. I know I’d find the money somewhere…
Tags: computing platform, hardware, innovation, laptop, mobile, mobile computing, pepper, pepper pad, tablet, technology, ultra portable
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12 Responses to “Pepper Pad”
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Not to be a buzz-kill, but in the 90’s they called these things “internet appliances” and the companies that made them went out of business (which is probably why Apple has yet to bring one to market). It seems like I see devices like this on sites like Engadget.com and Gizmodo.com at least once or twice a month (most recently the FIC AquaPAD+), but I have yet to actually see one in a store (or in the real world for that matter… you had to cross state lines to see one!). I think devices like this will remain amusing, but not financially viable, until the price point is the same as or lower then economy pcs.
Hands On The Pepper Pad
The most amazing thing about the Pepper Pad is how easy it is to pick up and use, then put down again.
The Pepper Pad’s portability goes far beyond that of laptops. I mentioned previously that laptops move from desk to desk and Bill Gates tel…
Justin, it’s amusing to see how the Pepper folks carefully avoided any mention of “internet appliance” in our meeting and in any of their marketing materials. I’m not sure, however, that the comparison is entirely fair. Whatever we call the Pepper Pad, it has something those late 90s devices didn’t: WiFi. And in the years since the dot bomb, we’ve seen web applications become really useful replacements to desktop apps. I know a number of people who prefer Gmail’s web interface over Outlook and use it accordingly.
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So the Pepper Pad has portability, usability, and connectivity at a time when the web is emerging as the killer app and spyware and other malware are making people think hard before giving an old PC to their kids. The maintenance cost of PCs is starting to affect home users. As a likely alternative to those secondary or tertiary PCs, the Pepper Pad should be far less susceptible to those digital maladies and have zero maintenance costs.
[...] Background: this post is grew out of some discussion at TeleRead, NoSheep, and here at MaisonBisson. [...]
Yo, i had already heard about the pepper pad computer and I was excited about it and wanted to get it. Now i waiting for an answer from my parents if they have gotten it for me or not but i think the information you gave was wondeful and will probably be even more usful to none-knowledgable people of the Pepper Pad and its technology!!!
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